Jenny Plague-Bringer(60)

Juliana lay awake for nearly half an hour, staring at the moonlit door to her room. She’d left it unlocked, in the drunken hope that Sebastian would be bold and impertinent enough to visit her in the night. He never came, and she eventually passed out.

She had confused but vivid dreams, in which Mr. Barrett was some dark-eyed king in ancient Greece, and she was his weapon, bringing the demon plague to a city he meant to conquer.



* * *



In the morning, Barrett had a large, dark woman in a bright dress come to the apartment and prepare a bracing breakfast of “grits,” bacon, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. It was the perfect cure for the slight hangover Juliana felt from the night before. It would have been much worse if she hadn’t danced out so much of the alcohol.

He drove them to the docks and showed them the towering steel ship that would whisk them across the Atlantic like a seafaring locomotive. Its name was painted in huge black letters on the hull: S.S. Eurydice.

“I wish you both the best of luck,” Barrett said, giving them their tickets. He took Juliana’s gloved hand and held it. “Be safe.”

“Thank you so much for everything, Mr....Jonathan,” Juliana said.

“Mr. Jonathan?” Barrett laughed. “I’ll accept it this time. Next time you see me, I expect to be addressed correctly.”

“I don’t suppose we will see you again, though,” Sebastian said, with an ‘ain’t-that-a-shame’ sort of smile. “Not for a long time.”

“As it happens, I plan to visit Berlin myself in the near future,” Barrett said. “A little more of that boring shipping business. With any luck, my friends in the Human Evolution Congress will invite me to see the advanced work they’ll be doing with you. So we may meet again sooner than you expect, Sebastian.”

Sebastian nodded, frowning, and didn’t say anything.

“Until then, good luck and Godspeed to you both.” Barrett held Juliana’s hand, then slowly released her and offered his hand to Sebastian instead.

“Thank you for all your help, Mr. Barrett.” Sebastian said, though his tone was cold. “We appreciate it more than we can say.”

When Sebastian shook Barrett’s hand, Barrett hissed and jerked his hand back. Barrett stared at his palm, and Juliana saw what looked like burn marks across his fingers.

“Did I squeeze your hand too hard?” Sebastian asked, clearly trying not to snicker. “I forget my own strength.”

“The strength of your grip had nothing to do with it,” Barrett hissed. He showed Sebastian the strange burn marks on his hand.

“Oh, let me heal that for you,” Sebastian whispered, reaching for him.

“Don’t touch me again!” Barrett tucked his hand into his coat pocket and glared at Sebastian with an ugly expression on his face, full of hate. Then it smoothed out into a businesslike smile. “I hope you enjoy each other.” He tipped his hat and walked back toward his car, leaving them at the crowded ticket gate.

“What just happened?” Juliana asked.

“My touch hurt him instead of healing him. What a pity.” Sebastian sounded almost delighted. “Come on, let’s get onboard. I can’t wait to cross the ocean.”

The S.S. Eurydice was a multi-deck steamship with its hull filled with cargo—international mail, rum and tobacco from the West Indies, timber and cotton from the United States. A few hundred passengers rode on the upper floors.

Juliana had a stateroom on the highest deck, with a teak chest of drawers and matching wardrobe, a queen-sized bed, soft carpeting, and a private bath, lit by ornate sconce lamps and a row of curtained portholes. Seth’s room was on the same hall, in a servant’s nook, essentially just a cot in a narrow closet without a single window.

“How posh,” Seth said, looking over his quarters.

“It’s better than sleeping with four roustabouts in a tent on a summer night,” Juliana pointed out.

“It’s also better than sleeping in a sewer during a flood, or in a barrel of rusty nails. It’s better than so many things.”

“If you’re pleasant to me this evening, I may let you sleep on the divan in my sitting room,” she said.

“Or we could trade rooms,” Sebastian suggested.

“I don’t believe that will happen. Shall we watch the launch?”

“Won’t it be crowded out on the deck?” Sebastian asked. He knew how being in a crowd terrified her.

“Not on the top deck,” Juliana said. “Most passengers don’t have access.”

“Aren’t we traveling in high style?”

They watched from the railing of the upper deck as the steamship chugged away from the terminal. Most of the passengers were crowded on the level below them, leaning over the railing and waving good-bye to a matching crowd on the dock, friends and family seeing them off. There was a festive mood, like the beginning of a party.